One rainy day. Maslow said.

Maslow Hierarchy of needs; Image Courtesy Wikipedia.

Random conversations are beneficial sometimes. It could be from a family dinner, or perhaps ‘kopitiam’ catch-up chats with friends. Or sometimes just out of the blue, when there isn’t any to think about.

After some light discussion about future utopian possibilities, we thought of a possibility that the beginning of new future could be dictated by the Maslow’s law. Maslow hierarchy of needs was written in 1943 by Abraham Maslow. While going through the conversation, I find it to be more of a generalization to basic human needs just as a statement. Not that I am against it; rather celebrate the acknowledgement of being in its existence. However, the debate should be continuous as oppose to accepting the axiom of mankind’s existence.

Knowledge is essential to mankind’s growth, and its evolution to grasp the unknown. When one wonders, there are gazillion insights waiting to be discovered. What Maslow law brings is that the multiplication of human potential for knowledge comes in its highest order. Morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, acceptance of facts seems to be the basis of the ideal utopia society.

Funny enough after 66 years, 6.74 billion People do not live under these utopian orders. Hence, systems were created to let the natural process take over. Democracy, Communism, and other technologies are put to test in achieving the self-actualization utopian order for societies. To add, wars rampaging, politics with capitalism continuously pollutes policy makers, seems to paint an unconvincing future.

Let alone enough saving the planet, can we save our species to begin with?

William Harald-Wong speaks.

As a part of our weekly video post-ups, we, the people in thinklab would like to also include our upcoming speakers video pertaining to our design conference as an acknowledgement to the coming title of our conference. And today, we would like to share William Harald-Wong thoughts, as our semi-contributing writer and also a brief interview with him in his office.

Enjoy!

There is no middle ground.

It is cluttered with politeness.

I am going to conclude my talk before it starts. That's because with 15-20 minutes, I'll run out of time. The process can be invented along the way. Maybe we'll conveniently skip that part. If Einstein says that originality is copying that is undetected, let's salute him as a true genius... not for his E=mc2 -- who cares or understands that anyway? And so, Tan Sri-Tan Sri, Datuk-Datuk, Members of the Press, Ladies and Gentleman, that is the state of our Local Design Culture.

But all is not lost. Recent earthquakes have rattled the surface. What will the widening cracks bring forth?

A potluck, back-to-front presentation by William Harald-Wong who can only share his work (and insights) knowing that, at least, they really did happened.

William Harald-Wong

Design visionary.

Between being trendy and responsible, designers are often caught in the middle of glory in the discipline itself. It is somewhat appealing to be in front of a media and be able to verbalize the working mantra that feels like a proven theory in their respective concepts of their lives. Or just perhaps pure vision and old school hard work that makes the difference.

Let's observe video 1 by Wallpaper in an interview with Phillipe Starck.

In his lifetime, designing buildings, interior, product and pretty much every commercial driven objects imaginable more than portfolio for business. When a designer designs, he observes his life closely at the same time work religiously. Love, democracy and getting priority straight is perhaps a darn good advice from a person who has certainly made a mark in design history himself.

What Mr. Starck have come across is years of experiencing a massive chain of reaction in industrial commercial production. Eye opener statement such as 'design as a trend' and doesn't see where design is heading until the environmental and economical issue is resolved, is perhaps the most honest statement I have ever heard about the future of design industry.

I am rethinking my design options already.

Thinklab Design Conference / The Local Design Culture.

Good-day people!

Thinklab is finally announcing our next coming conference, titled 'The Local Design Culture'.

We've made preparation since early this year, so we planned for this conference to be worth the wait.

With 6 of brilliant design industry talents, such as Suzy Sulaiman of Re-cap and William Harald Wong of WHW & Associates, this title will open the local design context to international design scene.

Details of the events are as below.

Location :National Art Gallery Auditorium, Kuala Lumpur

Date :12th December 2009, Saturday

Time :9.00 am until 1.00 pm.

Fee / For students :RM 30.00

For professionals :RM 250.00

*All previous attendees of the earlier conference would receive 15% discount. For students, you are required to register along with your student I.D.

For more information, please contact Michelle at chelletan89@gmail.com.

Mutated Informed-nation.

Handphone was a luxury item to own 10 years ago. Mobile computing was unheard of at least 5 years ago. And now, it seems that too many information to be consumed in such a short span of time is becoming impossible to digest.

Introducing 'Mutated Informed-nation trend '. A trend where you pick what you want to learn, and listen what you want to. You can learn guitar less than a week from youtube, or you can pretty much protect yourselves against school bullies from subscribing to Martial Arts Mart. What I find interesting is that, what you learn from internet evolves and mutate culture across the globe. Next 5 years, high bandwidth internet is available in outskirts everywhere. Imagine that.

Recently, I took initiative to learn a new language. It's something I tell myself to learn a new language every 2 years. Through various medium online, I am now capable to hold a decent conversation (*inquiring bathroom locations and similar relevant issues). Which concerns me, if it was this easy for me to learn a new language, what are other barriers that can be broken, in combating racism and prejudice. Learning a new language opens up a different paradigm of understanding culture, and possibilities of new Barack Obamas in every other nations.

The idea of nationalism, as other -isms, can be quite alarming if it is to incite segregation. Fractals of opinions are usually at the extreme ends and according to history, can be quite inconsolable. Sometimes I even joke about the new world order of 'Information-ism'. How much can we digest, are we digesting the important things, does every information have to be important, and so on so forth.

The more mobile and faster the information becomes, the more unfamiliar landscape of the reality is. In which, are we ready to adapt the constant change and meet the madness of our future demands. Environmental impact is constant, and we are still in the midst of order in chaos. This might sound like Authoritarian, but, in truth, the reality speaks through natural disasters and bad economics.

I used to think that mutants are only fictional characters and comes in physical form.

Thinklab Designer Series : Part 5 / Ian Davies

Greetings people! Every week, we are posting our video interviews / share video snippets of designers that we have encountered since the beginning of the year, as we begin with those that were involved with our recent Design Conference Mini Series and KLDW 09. Some of them also made contribution to write on this blog. We thank you for your support as we are beginning to sense a change of evolution in the local design industry.

Ian Davies is one of the most important faces in the local design scene. He has been previously worked with numerous award winning architects such as Norman Foster and Michael Graves, lectured in Royal College of Art in London, and now transits between Malaysia and India working for an interior architectural firm and consulting companies pertaining design. He dreams of a design change in Malaysia as that is what drives him here. In his talk, he highlighted creativity and so, we included that into this week's snippet for designer of the week video below.

Enjoy!

And you wonder why.

Do you need designers name to be on hard drives?

For many reasons, we can't seem to forgive media for morality mishaps, miseducation of something important, misinformed of something urgent. But when you carefully experience reality, do we filter information as logically humane as we would like to ideally be? Amplified information noise that exists in multi facet medias are scaring so many dumb proof users that at one point, you might believe that pigs are most hygienic animals.

The only design education public seems to arrive at is limited to coffee table design books. What is scary is that most designers are looking to establish themselves as coffee table design books designers too. *Coffee table book designers - designers that are out to produce visceral based trend for public consumption. Only pictures with no articulation needed.

Tim Brown, in his book, Change By Design, suggest design idea stretches further than the boundary of designing objects. Just like how ideas of making things work in objects respond objectively, that advent effect can have similar impact if design is conceptually linked into rethinking organizations and corporations actively.

Paradigm shift is significant in design thinking. I really hope we can move forward in educating the public through design thinking, so we don't have to deal with design superstars that is often exploited by marketeers and smear the name of good design. What if we're honest about the things we use daily and start improving our lives, in which essentially what design was meant to do.

MRN